Postmodernism and Its Comparative Education Implications Author(s): Val D.

Rust Reviewed work(s): Source: Comparative Education Review, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Nov., 1991), pp. 610-626 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Comparative and International Education Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1188108 . Accessed: 29/08/2012 12:29
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Presidential Address Postmodernism and Its Comparative Education Implications

VAL D. RUST

Postmodernism was one of the most debated issues in the academic world during the 1980s. Yet, the discussion almost bypassed the comparative education community. I argue that postmodernism should be a central concept in our comparative education discourse. Many people see postmodernism as a passing fad. However, the postmodernist idea has existed in social science and aesthetic literature since the 1950s. In artistic circles, particularlyin architecture and literarycriticism, the discussion of a shift from aesthetic modernism to postmodernism has been continuous and sustained,' while in the social sciences postmodernism has gone through two phases. The first was rather disparate, and, in fact, various labels were invented to describe it, such as "postindustrialism," the "information society," or the "technetronic society."2 In the 1970s the discussion of postmodernism all but disappeared from social science literature;3 however, in the past decade social scientists again discussed it, and by the mid-1980s postmodernism had left the ghetto of esoteric debates and had entered the mainstream of intellectual and public discourse.4 The term "postmodernism" now refers to a discussion involving not only social scientists but also three other strands of influence more closely connected with artistic modernism.
1 For the initial articles on aesthetic postmodernism, see Irving Howe, "MassSociety and Postmodern Fiction," Partisan Review 26 (Summer 1959): 420-36; Harry Levin, "What Was Modernism?" MassachusettsReview 1 (August 1960): 606-30. For an account of the development of the concept of postmodernism mainly in the arts, see Ihab Hassan, "Postface 1982: Toward a Concept of Postmodernism," in his The Dismemberment Orpheus (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), of pp. 259-71. 2 Arnold Toynbee first used the term "postmodern" in the 1950s; see his A Study of History (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), 9:235. Amitai Etzioni also uses the term "postmodern era" in The Active Society:A Theoryof Societal and Political Processes(New York: Free Press, 1968). Herman Kahn copied Daniel Bell's notion of the "postindustrial society"; see Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Years (New York: Free Wiener, The Year 2000: A Framework Speculation on the Next Thirty-three for Press, 1967); the fullest development by Daniel Bell is in The ComingPost-industrialSociety(New York: Basic, 1973). See also Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America'sRole in the Technetronic Era (New York: Viking, 1970). ' Even though Bell's major contributions came at this time; see ibid.; and Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions Capitalism(London: Heineman, 1976). of 4 An important distinction exists between the terms "modernity" and "modernism." Modernity typically refers to the era ushered in by the industrial revolution in England, the political revolution in France, and particularly by the secularizing influence of scientific rationalism emerging from the Enlightenment. Modernism is usually taken as a paradigm change in the arts toward the end of the nineteenth century. ComparativeEducation Review, vol. 35, no. 4. ? 1991 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved. 0010-4086/91/3504-0001$01.00
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First, postmodernism has become entwined with poststructuralism, a movement that has flourished in France during the past 2 decades. Its advocates, such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jean-Francois Lyotard, challenge the structuralists'claims that deep structures of language can be identified, which allow us to attach ultimate meanings to words. Instead, these French theorists emphasize the contingency of meaning and the slipperiness of language.5 Second, postmodernism has come under the influence of an architectural controversy. Modern architecture claims a universal, international style that stresses pure geometric forms for functionality and efficiency and disregards decoration and ornamentation not integral to the materials used. Postmoderns, who claim modern architecture results in monotony, dogmatism, and artistic poverty, dismiss it.6 Finally, postmodernism has become a part of the resurgence of modern philosophers of pragmatism, who join the French poststructuralists in challenging the major tenets of modern scientific and social knowledge. However, pragmatists are not quite as distrustful of liberalism and bourgeois politics as the French so often appear to be.7 The current postmodern movement appears to have gelled into two major orientations. Some claim that the term "postmodernism" is a periodization concept in that it refers to a new era, quite distinct from the modern age, possessing new formal features in culture, a new type of social life, and a new economic order.8 Others claim postmodernism does not represent a sharp break in Western political and cultural life but that it represents yet another style of discourse and a theoretical orientation for explaining and interpreting events in competition with other theoretical orientations that abound in the modern world.' My own orientation is a tempered acceptance of the notion of an era shift. Of course, the world is so pluralistic that a variety of conditions and
Peter Scott, "Reaching beyond Enlightenment," TimesHigher EducationSupplement(August 24, 5 1990), p. 28. "6 a brief but detailed discussion, see Charles Jencks, WhatIs Post-modernism? For (New York: St. Martin's, 1987). 7 The major figure in this movement is Richard Rorty, whose most important book is Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979). 8 See, e.g., Frederic Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society," in The Anti-aesthetic: Essays on PostmodernCulture, ed. Hal Foster (Seattle: Bay Press, 1983), pp. 111-25; Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, first published in France in 1979 and translated into English by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). Prior to his death in 1983, Michel Foucault claimed not to be entirely clear about the meaning 9 of postmodernism and attempted to lodge himself in the context of modernity, at least insofar as Kant and the Enlightenment are a part of modernity. See Michel Foucault, "What Is Enlightenment?" in the Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984). Rorty also sees "no sharp breaks in Western political or cultural life since the time of the French Revolution" and does not feel the term "postmodern" adequately reflects his own orientation. See Richard Rorty, "The Dangers of Over-philosophication-Reply to Arcilla and Nicholson," Educational Theory40 (Winter 1990): 41-45.
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orientations will always exist simultaneously; however, the pervasive ideology of modernism and modernity has been ruptured and is undergoing radical reconstruction. 10 Most proponents of periodization identify the 1960s as the time when modernism and modernity began to falter and a new international order began to take form. Manifestations of this new order were found in the student movement, the Green Revolution, the computer age, the new consumerism, and multinational capital, which suggested to many that the late modern age had been transcended. Such a claim ought to concern comparativists because our theoretical world has been structured around modernity and modernization. In fact, scholars such as Gail Kelly, Philip Altbach, and Robert Arnove have stressed that "the major theoretical framework informing research in Comparative Education during the 1960s and early 1970s was that of modernization."" Some comparativists played an important role in the development of modernization models,'2 such as structural functionalism, human capital theory, and systems analysis, while many others subjected these models to severe challenge. In the early 1970s, theories linked with modernization came under increasing attack and were soon in competition with other orientations that promised more adequate explanations of education in the social world. Challenges came from two quite distinct sources. First, world-systems advocates challenged the focus of modernization proponents on single-country studies, maintaining that the world functioned in such a way that any one country could only be understood in the context of the world capitalist system. Second, more ethnographically oriented researchers challenged modernization proponents' tendency to consider only the broad national or even international contexts and argued for personalized and culture-based studies that focused on individuals, interactions between individuals, and local cultural understandings. One inevitable consequence of these challenges is the conclusion that modernization theory is on the decline. But the connection of new theoretical orientations to modernity itself has rarely been addressed. I maintain that the competing educational theories and practices discussed in comparative
Andreas Huyssen, "Mapping the Postmodern," in After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass "10 Culture, Postmodernism,ed. Andreas Huyssen (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), pp. 179-222. " Gail P. Kelly, Philip G. Altbach, and Robert F. Arnove, "Trends in Comparative Education: A Critical Analysis," in ComparativeEducation, ed. Philip G. Altbach, Robert F. Arnove, and Gail P. Kelly (New York: Macmillan, 1982), p. 515. 12 See, e.g., Don Adams and Robert Bjork, Education in Developing Areas (New York: McKay, 1971); C. Arnold Anderson and Mary Jean Bowman, ed., Educationand Economic Development (Chicago: Aldine Press, 1965); Philip J. Foster, Education and Social Change in Ghana (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965); John Hanson and Cole S. Brembeck, ed., Education and the Developmentof Nations (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966); Andreas Kazamias, Educationand the Quest for Modernityin Turkey(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966). 612 November1991

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education circles in the past 2 decades are, by and large, linked in an integral way with modernity, but this linkage has been somewhat distorted or veiled because the challengers to modernization theory have assumed that the new theoretical orientations must be wedded to something other than modernity. The postmodernism discussion reveals that the label "modernization" has been attached to a narrow aspect of modernity. The most popular competing theoretical orientations to modernization, such as dependency theory and world-systems analysis, are themselves, in fact, committed to the basic language and assumptions of the modern age,'3 and postmodernism poses as much a challenge to these theories as it does to modernization theory itself. Jilrgen Habermas, a German critical theorist, is probably most responsible for initiating the current phase of the postmodernism discussion. In a 1980 paper, he actually rejects postmodernism as a concept, claiming it to be merely an antimodern sentiment."4 Borrowing from Max Weber, Habermas claims that, in the eighteenth century, Enlightenment thinkers split modernity into three autonomous spheres, as they endeavored to develop "objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art according to their inner logic." They intended to engage in "a rational organization of everyday social life" that would contribute to an understanding of the world and self, moral progress, the justice of institutions, and even the happiness of human beings.'" Habermas recognizes that this so-called "projectof Enlightenment" has not been particularlysuccessful, but he intends to revitalize its ideals, "feeble as they may be," and "not declare the entire project of modernity a lost cause." For him, the "project of Enlightenment" remains a noble one and should not be given over to those who wish to "negate modern culture.'"" A rich and controversial literature has followed Habermas's paper, some of which has little to do with the mainstream debates on postmodernism. For example, many challengers brand advocates of postmodernism as neoconservative.17 The use of this unfortunate label by certain critics
" Marx forms the philosophical base of most of these movements, and Baudrillard, e.g., maintains that Marx's major positions are little more than mirror images of capitalist society and consequently constitute its highest forms of justification. See Jean Baudrillarid, The Mirror of Production(St. Louis: Telos Press, 1975). The paper was first delivered in Frankfurt am Main, where Habermas was awarded the "14 Theodor W. Adorno Prize, and was entitled, "Modernity-an Unfinished Project"; it was reprinted as "Modernity-an Incomplete Project," in Foster, ed., pp. 3-15. The paper was also read at New York University and republished with the title "Modernity versus Postmodernity" as a lead article in New German Critique22 (Winter 1981): pp. 3-14. Habermas, "Modernity-an Incomplete Project," p. 9. "15 16 Ibid. "17 Even Habermas has recently published an entire book that focuses on the issue of conservatism; see Jiirgen Habermas, The New Conservatism,trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989).
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has confused the postmodern movement in the minds of many with works such as Allan Bloom's Closingof theAmerican Mind,'" or Christopher Lasch's Culture of Narcissism,19 and particularly certain political figures such as Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan. The comparative education community has played almost no role in this discussion.2" Two factors may explain why. First, much of our field is directed toward the developing world, while postmodernism is focused almost exclusively on Europe and North America. Second, the broader professional education community has only recently entered into postmodernism discussions.2' Although it is impossible here to address all the dimensions of postmodernism, there are several problems that are crucial to our field: (1) the totalitarian nature of metanarratives, (2) the problems of the Other, (3) the development of an information society through technology, and (4) art and aesthetics in everyday social life.
The Totalitarian Nature of Metanarratives

In a provocative essay entitled, "A Memorial of Marxism," the French scholar Jean-Francois Lyotard traces his break from the radical French Marxist movement of the 1960s. Initially, he became uneasy with his colleagues' demands that he defend certain aspects of Marxism as a "theoretical point of honor" and because of "the value of a utopia."22 Lyotard became increasingly disenchanted and ultimately severed his relationship with the group because he recognized that French Marxism has clear totalizing ambitions; it claims to account for every form of social experience, when in reality it is only one point of view among "severalincommensurable genres of discourse at play in society.'"23
Allan Bloom, Closing of the AmericanMind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987). "18 In the early stages of this movement, a basic framework of some of my own work was toward a critique of modernism with a view toward postmodernism. See, e.g., Val D. Rust, Alternativesin Education: Theoreticaland Historical Perspectives(London: Russell Sage, 1977). 21 A few critical studies have appeared, such as William E. Doll, Jr., "Foundations for a Postmodern Curriculum," Journal of CurriculumStudies 21 (1989): 243-53; Henry A. Giroux, "Postmodernism and the Discourse of Educational Criticism,"Journal of Education 170 (1988): 5-30; Mustafa Kiziltan, William J. Bain, and Anita Canizares, "Postmodern Conditions: Rethinking Public Education," Educational Theory40 (1990): 351-69; Peter McLaren, "Postmodernity and the Death of Politics: A Brazilian Reprieve," Educational Theory36 (1986): 389-401; Patti Lather, "Postmodernism and the Politics of Enlightenment," Educational Foundations 3 (Fall 1989): 7-28; Peter McLaren and Rhonda Hammer, "Critical Pedagogy and the Postmodern Challenge," EducationalFoundations3 (Fall 1989): 29-62; Cleo H. Cherryholmes, Power and Criticism:Poststructuralism Investigationsin Education (New York: Columbia University, Teachers College, 1988); and Henry Giroux, Postmodernism, Feminism (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1990). 22Jean-Francois Lyotard, "A Memorial of Marxism," reprint of an article published in Esprit (January 1982) and later translated by Cecile Lindsay in Lyotard's Peregrinations:Law, Form, Event (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 73. 23 Lyotard, Peregrinations, p. 72.
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19 Christopher Lasch, Culture of Narcissism (New York: Norton, 1978).

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Here Lyotard reiterates one of the central issues raised by the postmodern debate by challenging the epistemological foundations of modernity as reflected in "metanarratives," or "grand narratives."24In ThePostmodern Condition, Lyotard defines postmodernists as those who are "incredulous toward metanarratives."25The claim is that metanarratives lock civilization into totalitarian and logocentric thought systems. They provide a restrictive, totalizing theory of society and history, such as the modernist view that knowledge and truth are based on abstract principles and theoretical constructs rather than direct, subjective human experience and that they attempt to impose their own perspective and rules on all other narratives. In his work, Lyotard deals mainly with a critique of the metanarrative of natural science, claiming that its totalizing efforts have been similar to metanarratives such as the Christian religion, Western metaphysical constructs, and the belief in the unique destiny of the West; however, it is clear that natural science did not form the experiential foundation for Lyotard's point of view. Rather, it came from his encounter with French Marxism. Over a 15-year period Lyotard had become increasingly uneasy, and he came to feel that the language of radical Marxism he was expected to defend was no longer his. He ultimately moved away from it and began developing theoretical constructs that were more in accord with his own experience. In the process he challenged not only Marxism but also the whole paradigm of modernity. Reflecting the thought of many nineteenthcentury social scientists, the paradigm of modernity implies a dichotomous social construct, the modern forming one extreme and the traditional forming the other. Herbert Spencer saw a movement from social homogeneity toward differentiation; Max Weber visualized a shift from traditionalism to rationalism; Emile Durkheim saw society moving from organic to mechanical organization; Ferdinand Toennies lamented the loss of community (Gemeinschaft) the emergence of society (Gesellschaft). and Even Marx's paradigm is of societies progressing through a single, inexorable sequence of stages. Lyotard is but one of many critics who claim that innovations are transcending modernism and modernity. Foucault describes the "insurrection of subjugated knowledges," of people fighting against "totalitarian theories" which claim to provide the very bedrock of our modern conceptual existence. According to Foucault, these totalitarian or global theories are vulnerable to "local criticisms" and "noncentralized" theoretical products, whose validity does not depend on the approval of established regimes
24 "Metanarrative" is defined by Cherryholmes as something "similar to paradigms that guide thought and practice in a discipline or profession." They are "narratives about narratives." See Cherryholmes, p. 11. 25 Lyotard, The PostmodernCondition (n. 8 above).

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of thought and that allow individuals to move beyond "fixed referents" and "terroristic universals."26 The postmodern world is decentered, constantly changing, without the chains and conventions of modern society. Its proponents believe the story of pluralistic contemporary society is being written by a number of narratives and reject philosophical systems of thought that provide some universal standard, as reflected in Adam Smith, Sigmund Freud, Georg Hegel, Auguste Compte, and Karl Marx. A challenge of postmodernism to comparative educators is that we clarify the metanarratives driving our own work.27 Richard Rorty sees metanarrative as the theoretical "crust of convention" that we all carry and tend to universalize. This crust must be broken to open the world to the mind and soul.28 We must ask ourselves to what degree our metanarratives may be forms of "theoretical terrorism that deny contingency, values, struggle, and human agency.'"29 Contemporary students have difwith the works that might be considered classics in our field and ficulty even with the materials that are barely 2 or 3 decades old because this literature at times offends their sense of justice and balance.30Will students who read our works after the turn of the century find them, also, offensive and insensitive? The solution should not be to reject all metanarratives, trapping us into localized frameworks that have no general validity, that disallow comparison, and that deny integration of cultures and harmonizing values. Legitimate metanarratives ought to open the world to individuals and societies, providing forms of analysis that express and articulate differences and that encourage critical thinking without closing off thought and avenues for constructive action. Last year, Vandra Masemann made an impassioned plea for the legitimacy of varied ways of knowing."' Postmodernists would support that claim and reject any claim that one way of knowing is the only legitimate way. Rather, they would say our task is to determine which approach to knowing is appropriate to specific interests and needs rather than argue some universal application and validity, which ends up totalizing and confining in its ultimate effect.32
Michel Foucault, "Two Lectures," in Power and Knowledge:Selected Interviewsand OtherWritings, "26 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon, 1980), pp. 80-82. 27 Cherryholmes, in Power and Criticism,has done a masterful job with regard to the broader educational field. It is left for us to do something similar for comparative education. 28 Rorty (n. 9 above), p. 45. 29 Giroux, "Postmodernism and the Discourse of Educational Criticism," p. 16. o0Isaac Kandel, e.g., universalizes his sense of democracy, claiming that it is appropriate for all mankind. Vandra Masemann, "Ways of Knowing," Comparative Education Review 34 (November 1990): "31 465-73. 32 Here Habermas is called into question. His organizing notion of consensus suggests the potentially totalitarian and oppressive character of consensus politics, which can turn into mob politics. See Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism(New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1951).
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The Problem with the Other

Another issue that is of particular importance to comparative educators is the modern illusion that the bourgeois European center is by right a universal center. Those committed to a Eurocentrism33 attribute their sense of superiority to such movements as the project of Enlightenment. However, Andreas Huyssen reminds us that this project has been associated with the notion of "a culture of inner and outer imperialism.. . . Such imperialism, which has been so taken for granted by devoted moderns, no longer goes unchallenged."34 Both inner imperialism, which Habermas calls "internal colonization,'""35 and outer imperialism are now under threat. In Europe and North America numerous liberation and self-determination movements, involving ethnic groups, minority groups, neighborhoods, alternative life-style groups, as well as single-issue groups-representing gay and lesbian rights, feminists, a nonnuclear world, "right to life" legislation, and religious revival-have asserted themselves with a force that at times has resulted in physical violence."3 Education is not exempt from this list, as we find parent associations and students rights groups demanding to participate in school management policy and other decisions. And when we look at the issue from a global perspective, we must include all oppressed peoples of the world and recognize that they might break away from the hegemonic norms of bourgeois societies to create a field of stylistic and taste heterogeneity that defies overarching norms, universal standards, or national laws. Of course, social movements are not new. Throughout the modern age, Europe and America have experienced movements that are similar to those of today, which Klaus Eder clusters into so-called romantic and populist movements." The romantic movements represent a continuing backlash against the Age of Reason with its attempt to rationalize social life. They advocate a more "natural life" and social existence based on cooperation and sharing. Populist movements challenge the corporate structure of our economy and the stifling bureaucracies of the state apparatus. They demand participation in decision making in all forms of social and political life, including the school, the workplace, and the local government.
1988). Huyssen (n. 10 above), p. 219. 35Jirgen Habermas, "New Social Movements," Telos, no. 49 (Fall 1981), pp. 33-37. 36 One example of a growing literature on single-issue elements would be feminism, including Craig Owens, "The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism," in Foster, ed. (n. 8 above); Toril Moi, "Feminism, Postmodernism, and Style: Recent Feminist Criticism in the United States," Cultural Critique,no. 9 (Spring 1988), pp. 3-22; Carol Nicholson, "Postmodernism, Feminism, and Education: The Need for Solidarity," Educational Theory39 (1989): 197-205. 37 Klaus Eder, "A New Social Movement?" Telos, no. 52 (Summer 1982), pp. 5-20.
34

33 Agnes Heller and Ferene Feher, The PostmodernPolitical Condition(Cambridge: Polity Press,

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What is at stake with these forces is the demand that minority voices count and that political systems must be restructured to account for their interests. The most obvious political symbol of the new age is the obsolescence of majority rule, which blunts variety, openness, and diversity. Majority rule relies on the tyranny of mass society, including so-called representative government, which, from the perspective of minorities, has rarely been representative. For example, in America nonwhites (20 percent of the population) have only 4 percent of the seats in Congress and women (over 50 percent of the population) also have only 4 percent of the seats, and yet American government is actually more "representative" than is government in most countries. Proponents of postmodernism suggest that a mass-oriented society is obsolete. Our decision-making apparatus must be altered to allow for a system based on multiple, rather than majority, rule. Does this lead to chaos and tyranny? Of course, there are great risks, but new promises. The recent focus of so much literature on the decline of belief in the legitimacy of modern political systems must be reinterpreted.38 However, belief systems, as such, are not in jeopardy. We are witnessing a shift away from universal belief systems toward a plurality of belief systems. Never has consensus been so hard to achieve, but this is not a reflection of a failed sense of belief; rather, it is an indication of a discovery that differences matter and that distinctions can and ought to be fought over. Conventional state authority, including superpower authority, is failing. We have witnessed the inability of the Soviet Union to maintain a hold on its empire, and, in spite of the recent events in the Middle East, the United States is no longer able to act unilaterally. Increasingly, the world order is shifting from a bipolar to a multipolar power configuration, and power within this framework is so broadly distributed that even the great powers are no longer able to enforce their will on Others."9The encounter of the West with such a world "is never a harmless experience."40 Those representing the so-called superpowers are finally beginning to discover that they are simply an Other among Others. At stake is the very identity of cultures, at least as we have come to know them in modernity. The Eurocentric orientation has long been one of ever-greater domination and control of the world, but the postmodernists point out that the central powers have lost their ability to master, to overpower, and to dominate, both internally and externally.
38 See, e.g., Hans N. Weiler, "Legalization, Expertise, and Participation: Strategies of CompensaEducation Review 27 (June 1983): 259-77. tory Legitimation in Educational Policy," Comparative 39 Doyle McManus and Robin Wright, "For the Strong, a New Dynamic of Power," Los Angeles Times (a world report special edition: "Seeking a New World") (December 11, 1990), p. H2. 40 Paul Ricoeur, Historyand Truth (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1965), p. 278.

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This presents the world with a terrible double-edged sword. On the one hand, the possibility is developing that solidarity between groups can come through the participation of fringe groups in all forms of life. There is a growing possibility for the emergence of a type of direct democracy, a sense of connectedness with life's events and decisions. The possibility of a global context is developing, with the breakdown of national boundaries, the creation of global markets, and the emergence of world concern through local involvement. On the other hand, the possibility of the demise of any attempt at rational policy-making is also developing, this having been replaced by relativized preference, dictated by peculiarity of taste, and decision making based on specific group identity rather than on any globalized general concern or perspective. A number of issues having to do with the problem of the Other present themselves to comparative educators. Modern school systems were structured for modern purposes. That is, schools served as universalizing institutions, promoting unifying ideals and fostering notions of nationalism and civic pride. Education for postmodernism raises serious questions about such objectives. But, as schools address the interests of subcultures and global tendencies, the form that schooling must take in the future is left unanswered. One thing ought to be clear. Schools must attune themselves to the voice of the Other. Now, educators, curriculum developers, and textbook writers must not only hear Others' voices, but they also must begin to listen.41 Postmodernism provides a sense of hope and legitimacy for those Others; it outlines conditions for resistance in totalizing institutions such as jails, mental institutions, and military organizations and schools, as well as the promise of liberation in more open environments.42 A danger of postmodernist discourse is that it presents itself in such a way as to suggest that the Others are able to assert themselves, to participate as full and equal partners in any discussion. We must recognize that this is not a warranted point of view. According to Foucault, the production of any discourse, including postmodern discourse, is rarely to reveal truth or meaning but to act as a "system of control." Discourse analysis and cultural studies are really fundamentally studies of power. They should reveal who wields power, in whose interests it is wielded, and with what effects.43 There is, therefore, a clear necessity for comparative educators to operate with the full knowledge that differential advantage
William J. Bain and Mustafa U. Kiziltan, "Theoretical Reformulations of Resistance in the "41 Wake of Postmodernity" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society, Atlanta, March 17-22, 1988). 42 For a discussion of resistance in the context of education, see ibid. Michel Foucault, The Archeologyof Knowledge(London: Tavistock Publications, 1972), p. 224. "43

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continues to exist between groups and to recognize the obligation of educators to engage in analysis that focuses on how institutions and movements may protect the weak against the strong. We ought to start with our own society. We must become more sensitive to the Others of our profession, constantly asking if our profession is serving as fully as it might those who have traditionally been on the periphery, including the young neophytes, members of minorities, professionals from the Third World, schoolteachers, and women. We must become advocates of change, not only with regard to our own profession, but also in the larger educational community, insisting on programs that provide tools for overcoming inequity and disadvantage. Many of these tools are already available in the form of communications technology.
Information Society through Technology

In the early 1970s, Daniel Bell declared that the industrial era was over and that a new social order was emerging, where knowledge and information was replacing industrial commodity production as the "axial principle" of social organization. He claimed American society was becoming characterized by processes in which "telecommunications and computers are strategic for the exchange of information and knowledge."44If modern society was characterized by a labor theory of value, then postindustrial society would be characterized by a technical knowledge theory of value. Bell's predictions of 2 decades ago have not only been exceeded but have also resulted in what Charles Jencks calls an instantaneous, 24-hour "information world."45 As early as 1962, Fritz Machlup had given solid evidence that almost half the work force in the United States was engaged in information production and distribution.46 By 1980 the estimate had grown to 60 percent,47 and by 1990 the figure had grown again to an astounding 75 percent.48 Such a development has profound implications for the entire world. In fact, it has tended to obliterate the modernist categories of rich and poor, the North and South, and has thrust the world into a division of what Alvin Toffler calls the fast and the slow, where advanced technology, particularly electronics, speeds production and distribution time, to the point that speed has become the most important element of our postmodern condition.49 In contrast, those societies that remain in the traditional heavy production phase of development move at a glacial pace.
44 Bell, The Coming Post-industrial Society (n. 2 above), p. 194. 45Jencks (n. 6 above), p. 44. in the United States (Princeton, N.J.: 46 Fritz Machlup, The Productionand Distribution Knowledge of Princeton University Press, 1962). 47Jencks, p. 44. 48 Alvin Toffler, Powershift(New York: Bantam, 1990), p. 75. 49 Ibid., chap. 30.

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It is not entirely positive for a society to be on the cutting edge of the technological world. In the 1960s, there was a perception that the whole technical apparatus of advanced societies had become so pervasive that it had emancipated itself from human control and had come to serve its own material requirements.5o That appears to have been a transitory worry because today there is little sense of a technological society out of control. Instead, two other points of view have emerged. One comes from critical theorists, who claim that technology is not the villain; for them, it remains the servant of international capitalism. According to observers, such as Douglas Kellner, even though technology plays a greater role than ever before, "techno-capitalism remains a form of capitalism," which, although it is progressive in many respects, remains a form of domination, exacerbating class inequalities, while intensifying misery and suffering for millions of people throughout the world.5' A second more positive interpretation of the communications revolution is that technology itself has moved us through the transition period of technological exploitation and now allows us to transcend the boundaries of technology toward becoming self-directed, autonomous creators. From this vantage point, technology has opened the world and has broken the bonds of previous constraints, particularly because a characteristic of our current information-based environment is that information can neither be fully owned nor wholly consumed by anyone. To the contrary, information now expands through use, becoming more inclusive. In the process, it breaks out of artificial boundaries and cannot be totally controlled and exploited by any one group or institution, including schools. In the educational sphere, we find that information technology, with its computers, modems, and telefax modes, has transcended the structural boundaries that typically define schooling, and multiplying communications apparatuses are now taking over education. In America, there are now more than 9,000 radio stations, 5,000 cable television systems, and many newspapers and magazines devoted to special tastes and interests. In my hometown of Los Angeles, broadcasts can be heard in Japanese, Spanish, Hebrew, Korean, Chinese, Filipino, German, Hindi, and Armenian, which consume almost 20 percent of the available broadcast time.52 However, these developments have raised new issues, new dilemmas, including the fact that electronic communications have become so pervasive that, in the opinion of some postmodernists, we now face a world that is
50 See, e.g., Helmut Schelsky, Der Mensch in der Zivilisation (Cologne: WestWissenschaftlichen deutschen Verlag, 1961); Jacques Ellul, The TechnologicalSociety (New York: Vintage, 1964); and Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (Boston: Beacon, 1966). 51 Douglas Kellner, Critical Theory,Marxismand Modernity(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), pp. 178-90. 52 David Stoloff, "The Development, Content, and Audience Response to Ethnic Television in Los Angeles" (doctoral diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1982), chap. 1.

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largely artificial. Ours is a world, no longer of reality, but of simulation, where it is no longer possible to separate the real from the image. Jean Baudrillard claims the process of simulation has gone through successive stages. Originally, images were simply reflections of basic reality, then they masked and perverted that reality, then they masked its absence, and finally they bore no relation to any reality but were pure simulation."5 In fact, the television screen, computer monitor, and videocassette recorder instruments have so invaded our lives as to obliterate privacy and intimacy.54 From this vantage point, one might conclude that war, love, cosmic exploration, and education are barely connected with human beings any longer but with surreal images that play before us, robbing us of our true humanity, our encounter with substantial reality. A number of tasks face comparative educators in the new information society. The major schooling lesson for us is that the factory model of schooling is directly connected with modernity, and it is as obsolete as the factory has become in postmodernity. We must contribute to a new definition of school that is appropriate to the new age. Beyond these general imperatives we also need to examine the extent to which the new technology is liberating and the extent to which it is related to exploitative commercial interests. We must explore how education can break the bonds of the totalizing genius of capitalism, whose major interest is to expand markets, capture the minds of potential consumers, and invade the educational enterprise in the interests of economic advantage. Capitalism's totalizing tendency includes aesthetic production as a part of commodity production in general.
Art and Aesthetics in Everyday Social Life

In the name of differentiation and specialization, we recall that art and aesthetics took on a life separate from science, morality, and law. One consequence of this modern division is that almost every account of A modernity described by social scientists omits the arts and aesthetics."55 major thrust of postmodernism is to rejoin these spheres. Scott Lasch describes postmodernism as a process of dedifferentiation, a reversal of autonomization,56 while Frederic Jameson explains it as a disappearance of the "critical distance" between spheres that have heretofore enjoyed a relative degree of autonomy.57 Postmodern debates fuse the social and the cultural in ways that have profound implications for both.
"53 Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulations," in Jean Baudrillard:SelectedWritings,ed. Mark Jean Poster (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 170. 54 Baudrillard (n. 13 above). 55 Of the 33 variables describing modernity that were identified at the Hakone Conference in 1965, none was related to the arts. See Rust (n. 20 above), pp. 8-11. 56 Scott Lasch, Sociologyof Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 263. 57 Frederic Jameson, "Modernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," New Left Review, no. 146 (July/August 1984), p. 87.
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The arts have postmodern political resonance in two major ways. For some, the postmodern is distinctly antimodern. In fact, in some respects there is a passionate hatred for all that represents modernity. This was particularly so during the transition period away from modernity in the 1960s. That was the period of psychedelic art, acid rock, and alternative and street theater, when the counterculture was engaged in an adversarial struggle against the modern and the movement was in many respects anticulture, in any high cultural sense.58 Although the temper of the times shifted, to some extent that orientation persists today. Ihab Hassan, for example, describes it thus: "Postmodernism ... is essentially subversive in form and anarchic in its cultural spirit. It dramatizes its lack of faith in art even as it produces new works of art intended to hasten both cultural and artistic dissolution.""59 Another variation on this antimodern theme comes from critical theorists, who focus on the link between culture and the political economy, claiming that culture is victimized and used as a means of domination.60 They claim that both high and low culture has fallen prey to extreme forms of standardization, conformity, and rationalization.61Jameson, for example, sees the negative implications of the new age, claiming that, as aesthetic production has become integrated into commodity production generally and has participated in the multinational economic domination throughout the world,62there comes to reign a "whole 'degraded' landscape of schlock and kitsch, of TV series and Readers' Digest culture, of advertising and motels, of the late show and the grade-B Hollywood film, of so-called paraliterature with its airport paperback categories of the gothic and the romance, the popular biography, the murder mystery and science fiction or fantasy novel.""6 There are clear implications for comparative educators. We must be ever sensitive to the degree to which schools are serving the culture industry and its desire to act as an instrument of social control for economic advantage. In contrast to antimodern expositions, other interpreters see postmodernism in a more balanced perspective. While agreeing that the cultural and the social have fused, these interpreters claim that antimodernism can now proclaim its own positive identity.64The genius of postmodernism is seen in its ability to transcend time and space, history and geography.
58 See Foster, ed. (n. 8 above). 24 5 Ihab Hassan, "Joyce, Beckett, and the Postmodern Imagination," TriQuarterly (Fall 1975):

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and Politics (Minneapolis: University of 6oJonathan Arac, "Introduction," in his Postmodernism Minnesota Press, 1986), p. xxx. 61 Kellner (n. 51 above), pp. 121-45. "62Jameson,"Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism." 63 Ibid., p. 55. 64 Huyssen (n. 10 above), p. 193.
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It is characterized by simultaneity, incorporating the past into the present, the distant into the local, and by the synthesis of various traditions. Architecture is an important case in point. It has broken from the straitjacket of modernism and has flourished in an eclecticism of various styles and tastes. Stylistic shifts appear to be kaleidoscopic and simultaneous. Postmodern developments have both positive and negative potential. Andreas Huyssen recognizes a breaking away from the safe categories and established institutions that harbored art, including the academy, the museum, the art gallery, and the concert hall to allow "a new freedom, a cultural liberation."65 However, the academic world faces the unsettling condition of having lost its ability to act as the definer and preserver of cultural standards, which have been synonymous with high culture. Postmodernists often demand that modern forms of high culture, as expressed through the arts, may be neither better nor worse than traditional and popular forms. Popular culture not only has become legitimate but also has begun to inform high culture in ways that would have been unthinkable in the modern age. Such a trend is championed by people such as Jencks, who sings that we have moved "from mass-production to many fragmented taste cultures; from centralized control in government and business to peripheral decision-making; from repetitive manufacture of identical objects to the fast-changing manufacture of varying objects; from few styles to many genres; from national to global consciousness and, at the same time, local identification."66 The question facing most comparative educators, who have rarely dealt with the arts, is the role this domain should play in educational inquiry and discourse. The presidential address by Peter Hackett in this journal 3 years ago is but one indication of the need to incorporate the arts and aesthetics into our own agenda.67 From my vantage point, Hackett did not go far enough. Aesthetics are not only valuable, as he forcefully claims, but if we are to make sense of the contemporary discourse on our social world and the role of education there, then it is also socially imperative to include the arts. Our assessments must include the degree to which schools serve as the custodians of high culture and the degree to which they must serve popular culture. Of course, the tensions between the two may be cultural in themselves. Americans, for example, have always taken pride in their democratic life, including democratic art as exemplified in figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman.68 Europe, in contrast, views
66Jencks (n. 6 above), p. 43. "67 Peter Hackett, "Aesthetics as a Dimension for Comparative Study," ComparativeEducation Review 32 (November 1988): pp. 389-99. 68 Rob Kroes, High Brow MeetsLow Brow: AmericanCultureas an IntellectualConcern(Amsterdam: Free University Press, 1988), p. xii. 624 November 1991 Ibid., p. 219. "65

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popular culture as subversive, or worse, reflecting a trend toward Americanization, or worse still, the "Californication" of the world, or worst of all, the "Los Angelization of the globe."69 These issues are not confined to the developed world, although in the so-called developing world they are not so much between popular and high culture as they are between modern imperatives and traditional culture. The religion of modernism has imposed itself on the traditional with little regard for what it is destroying. In the educational sphere, there undoubtedly remain many who feel it a mark of success that modern schooling has been instrumental in helping to kill traditional cultures, but postmoderns see the world otherwise. They point out that modern schooling has usually been detrimental to most so-called traditional local and indigenous art. In Indonesia, for example, as young people's lives are consumed by formal schooling, which here means modern schooling, their whole cultural system begins to crumble because children are no longer available to incorporate the aesthetics of life and art provided by traditional social experience. Comparative educators must see the implications of political policies concerning schooling for culture, where the arts are not autonomous from other dimensions of traditional life. Comments Concluding I have outlined some strands of our postmodern condition. It would be simple, indeed, to ignore the postmodernism discussion; however, the issues raised are far too important. Postmodern criticism is so crucial because questioning the basic tenets of modernity challenges the basis of the world's recent social and cultural history on which we have come to rely, including the meaning of modern schooling throughout the world. Its most vociferous proponents claim that the modern age has been transcended and is now dying or may even be dead and that we are now entering a new era. Other scholars have criticized postmodernist thought systems for being parochial and completely self-referential, claiming their systems of thought are entirely context dependent. They maintain that these thought systems are incompatible, that they are incommensurate. That is, they lack fundamental bases that allow for comparison. Of course, the movement has inherent dangers, but its benefits outweigh its risks. In spite of conceptual difficulties, postmodernism may provide a more accurate depiction of reality than existing frameworks. We comparative educators must discuss and explore the opportunities of the incipient age. We must define more clearly the metanarratives that have driven our field, then we must engage in the critical task of disassembling these narratives because they define what comparativists find acceptable,
McLaren and Hammer (n. 21 above), p. 33. "69 ComparativeEducationReview 625

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desirable, and efficient in education. At the same time, we must increase our attention to small narratives, the far-ranging Others of the world. While becoming more sensitive to the dangers of communications technology, we must also understand its liberating potential. While incorporating the arts into our life sphere, we must learn to balance high and popular culture. The present discourse has worldwide implications; it centers on knowledge, rationalism, communications, aesthetics, and power, on all that ought to occupy the best minds of our field.

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